


i wanna be wherever you are

by emilybrontay



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, Las Vegas Wedding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-11
Updated: 2016-10-11
Packaged: 2018-08-21 21:17:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8260756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emilybrontay/pseuds/emilybrontay
Summary: They’re there for Charles’ 44th birthday – “matching double digits!” he offers as way of explanation – and they’ve been engaged for exactly twenty three days. Jake makes Amy leave her Wedding Binder at home.“But the flight-” she says as they are about to leave and he stops her with a “binder, Amy!”“Ah-da-da-da-da, no. On the flight you will be watching Die Hard on my portable DVD player-”“What is it, 2007?”“Rude – and you will also be engaging in the greatest drinking game known to man – Drunk Boyle Bingo.”She presses her lips together like she’s suppressing a protest. He kisses her nose.“Put the binder down, Santiago.”She huffs as if it’s physically painful to her, but lays the Wedding Binder down carefully on the coffee table.“I’ll miss you,” she says longingly as Jake grabs her hand and pulls her from the apartment.Title is from In Your Car by Big Deal





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [philthestone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/gifts).



> this is phil's birthday present!!!! i started writing this like, last year, and it is ONLY NOW seeing the light of day! it was super fun to write though. i love maybe eight drink amy.

They’re there for Charles’ 44th birthday – “ _matching double digits_!” he offers as way of explanation – and they’ve been engaged for exactly twenty three days. Jake makes Amy leave her Wedding Binder at home.

“But the flight-” she says as they are about to leave and he stops her with a “ _binder, Amy!_ ”

“Ah-da-da-da-da, no. On the flight you will be watching _Die Hard_ on my portable DVD player-”

“What is it, 2007?”

“Rude – and you will also be engaging in the greatest drinking game known to man – Drunk Boyle Bingo.”

She presses her lips together like she’s suppressing a protest. He kisses her nose.

“Put the binder down, Santiago.”

She huffs as if it’s physically painful to her, but lays the Wedding Binder down carefully on the coffee table.

“I’ll miss you,” she says longingly as Jake grabs her hand and pulls her from the apartment.

 

* * *

 

The hotel is _snazzy._ They have a _Jacuzzi_ and a _fur rug_ in their room.

“I never want to leave,” Jake says reverently, throwing himself down on the rug, “Amy, Amy, feel how soft this is, Amy-”

Amy is crouched by the mini bar, peering at the tiny bottles of wine.

“Oh, so that’s how we’re playing it?” Jake says, sitting up, “How’s it looking?”

Amy hums for a moment. “Lotta wine. I think there’s some vodka too. Definitely some nuts.”

“Hit me with ‘em,” he holds out his hands, “I’m snacky!”

“You ate on the plane!” she says, but she throws the packet anyway.

“You’re the best nearly wife ever!” he tells her cheerily, and empties the whole bag into his mouth.

Amy groans. “Since I can’t have my binder, can we lay off wedding stuff? Like, any mentions of it? I keep thinking about the invitation fonts and it’s wigging me out.”

“So no nearly-wife?”

“No nearly-wife. This weekend, we’re just…mrmmzeep and jinglebin, not nearly-husband and wife.”

She looks over at him, and he’s grinning. “What?”

“I’m really glad you’re my jinglebin,” he says.

She blushes a little, and turns back to the bar. “You want a drink?”

“God, yes.”

 

* * *

 

Two whole mini bars (theirs and Rosa’s) and a round of Drunk Boyle Bingo later, it’s midnight. Maybe. Amy doesn’t know. They’re in the bar, or the casino, or _somewhere_ with a lot of alcohol, and Gina is telling her the story of her life.

“So I had to break it off because _duh_ , a mob wife can’t work for the NYPD, even as a civilian administrator, although personally I think my role is far more – Amy? Pay me attention!”

Amy is not paying her attention. One thought is throbbing through her vodka drenched brain – Jake is sat on the other side of Gina and she loves Jake and she wants to marry Jake and she doesn’t care about fonts.

“Amy are you even-?”

“I WANNA MAKE JARRY!” she thinks she says quietly, but she’s yelling it, because Maybe Eight Drink Amy yells.

“That’s nice sweetie, but you’re not my type,” Gina says, and turns back to her cocktail.

“NO,” Amy yells again (“Stop shouting,” Rosa mutters from the bar stool next to her) “I WANNA MARRY JAKE.”

At the sound of his name, Jake turns around. He is grinning, a crooked drunken grin. “YOU ARE MARRYING ME!” he shouts. She thinks he’s making fun of her, but that doesn’t matter because he loves her, he loves her more than he loves his job and more than Die Hard and more than anything else ever in the world.

“NO,” she says, smacking the bar with her fist, “NOW. PLEASE.”

“Ma’am, please lower the volume of your voice,” the barman hisses.

“BUT I WANNA MARRY HIM!” Amy tells the barman, and she slides off the stool because she’s not close enough to Jake right now, dammit.

She thinks he’s as drunk as her, because he’s hiccup-laughing as she stumbles into his arms.

“I don’t care about fonts,” she says into his chest.

“Hey, you’re using your inside voice!”

“I don’t care about fonts,” she repeats, looking up at him.

“I don’t care about fonts either.”

“We should get married,” and then, because it’s that bit from that Beyonce song Gina makes her listen to, she sings it, “ _We should get married_.”

“ _Let’s stop holding back on this and let’s get carried away_ – hey, we could be the next Jayonce, Santiago!”

She shakes her head, because _Drake_ sings on that song, Gina told her, and he should _know that_ , and she doesn’t _want them_ to be Jayonce, she wants them to be – to be – _Jakmy_ , or _Peraltiago_ or something. The two of them, just the two of them, forever and ever amen. Her hands move from his hips to lock behind his neck because he is _sturdy_ and _her best friend_ and the vodka is making the room spin.

“Drake,” she says, and he laughs.

“No, _Jake_.”

She ignores him. “Let’s do it,” she says, and she’s aware they’re swaying in each other’s arms, and that they’re in Vegas and her mother didn’t speak to her brother for _a month_ after her did this, but she says it anyway, “Let’s do it let’s get married let’s do it let’s do it-”

“You’d be my wife,” he says, slightly dazed, like he’s never really thought about it before, “I’d have a _wife_.”

She nods solemnly. Behind them, Gina mimes vomiting.

“Let’s do it!”

“Yay!” the world stops spinning for a moment, Jake’s beam the axis the Earth hinges upon.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he turns from her to yell to the rest of the squad, who are drinking and dancing and unaware of the _enormity_ of what is going on around them, “Gentlemen and ladies! Detective Amy Santiago and I are going to do it! In Vegas!”

“We thought you guys already did it in Vegas,” Rosa replies shortly, “that’s why you took so long to get down to the bar.”

“Because you were getting down, upstairs!” Charles crows, and holds out his hand for Jake to high-five.

“Boyle, no.”

“WE’RE GONNA GET MARRIED!”

“Ohhh,” Boyle nods knowingly, “ _that’s the it!_ ”

 

She wants Holt to marry them – “please Raymondo, please please please,” she says, because maybe-eight drink Amy calls the Captain Raymondo – but he’s drunk.

“I cannot marry you whilst inebriated, detectives,” he tells them, his slight swaying in his seat the only sign of how much he’s had to drink, “You will have to get an Elvis impersonator to do it.”

“We don’t want an Elvis impersonator! We want you!”

Holt shakes his head, a little sadly.

“Perhaps…Sergeant Jeffords would do the honours…”

Amy looks at Jake, and Jake looks at Amy. “Captain,” Jake says, “would you…give me away?”

“Hey!” Amy protests, “I’m supposed to be the one asking that!”

“It’s an outdated tradition, Santiago, be a little more open-minded!”

“Santiago-Peralta,” Amy corrects him in sing-song. He smiles down at her, tucked underneath his arm. It’s the smallest of smiles, the tiniest quirks of the corners of his lips, but it makes her giddy for reasons unrelated to the amount of alcohol she’s consumed.

“I would be…honoured, Peralta,” Holt replies gravely, “I think I may need another alcoholic beverage.”

He slips off his stool, to go in search of a bartender, but neither Amy nor Jake watch him walk away.

“Captain Amy Santiago-Peralta,” Jake says softly, unaware of anything that’s not Amy’s eyes, Amy’s face, Amy’s hair tucked behind her ears. Behind him, the Sarge clears his throat.

“I’ve had one whiskey,” he tells them, “and, even though my tolerance for alcohol is non-existent since the babies were born, the sound of you two screaming about getting married sobered Terry up pretty damn fast.”

“Would you do it Terry? Would you?”

“C’mon Ter-bear,” Gina says from the other side of Jake, leaning across him to grab some cherries from behind the bar, “Let the kids have their drunken Vegas wedding before Amy’s neuroses gets the better of her, and she goes to live in a knitting commune for spinsters because it’s safer than staying with Jake’s fire hazard ass.”

Amy untangles herself from Jake’s arms, and grabs his face with her hands.

“I would _never_ ,” she says, completely earnestly, “leave you for knitting.”

“Woah,” Gina pops a cherry in her mouth, “that’s heavy.”

Jake stares at her for what feels like an age. “But you _love_ knitting,” he says eventually.

“I _love_ you,” she says, still completely serious, “I only love knitting, I _love_ you.”

Jake beams. Terry promptly bursts into tears.

“God!” he says, “it’s like – you’re my own kids – my stupid grown up kids – you’re in love!”

“So you’ll do it, Ter-bear?” Amy asks, because Maybe Eight Drink Amy calls the Sarge Ter-bear like no-drink Gina does.

He nods, and then wraps his huge arms around the two of them.

“Congratulations, kids!”

* * *

 

The chapel is run by Cher, who is not really Cher but looks a lot like Cher.

“Believe was my karaoke song in high school,” Amy tells Cher, “My best friend Kylie and I, we had this whole dance routine and one Christmas we were supposed to perform it at this concert night, right, but I got stage fright so bad that-”

“Ames, we’re in!” Jake says, pulling her by the hand.

“But I had to tell Cher about me vomiting in Jared Wilkinson’s bass drum!” Amy protests, but Jake’s not listening.

The chapel seems to be made entirely of red velvet, with white wooden hearts lining the walls. Rosa steps in front of them, as they practically sprint down the aisle. She grabs Amy’s shoulders to steady her.

“I’m Jake’s best man,” she says, to which Jake replies; “Did I ask you?”

“Yes,” Rosa grimaces, “We were very drunk. In the academy. You wrote it on a napkin.”

“Oh yeah,” Jake smiles, remembering ( _it is so funny to Amy that Jake was a whole person before she met him, and that she was a whole person before he met her_ ) “Rosa and Jake best friends for life.”

Rosa looks mildly disgusted by the sentiment. “So. Anyway. I’ll take him from here.”

Jake lets go of Amy’s hand and follows Rosa down the aisle, and Amy nearly falls – she’d gotten so used to the weight of him, the two of them holding each other up.

“Hey there little bear,” Gina grabs her arm, “You okay?”

Amy looks at her. Gina is drunk – they’re all drunk – and looking at her with something that might be kindness in her eyes.

“You’re a nice person,” Amy says gently, “and you’re one of my best friends.”

Gina laughs.

“Let’s keep that between us, darling sister-in-law,” she says, “I got a rep to protect.”

Boyle takes the other arm.

“Sorry we stole your birthday’s thunder, Charles,” Amy says as the wedding march begins to play ( _she wishes they would play a remix, that she could walk faster, all she wants to freaking do is be married to Jake_ ).

“Are you kidding?!” Charles says, “This is the best birthday present you could’ve given me! Jake! And Amy! Married! Because of my birth! If I’d’ve known this was all it was going to take I would’ve flown us all to Vegas the week after you started at the Nine Nine!”

“I don’t think,” Amy can’t take her eyes off Jake, in his garbage Hawaiian shirt that she so desperately wants him to burn, “I don’t think it would’ve worked like that.”

 She thinks about Jake when she met him – messy, both literally and metaphorically. But kind, he’s always been so kind. Their third case together was this kidnapping that kept them up for nearly a week straight. The victim was found, unharmed but traumatised, in the cellar of a local businessman. When it came for her to give her statement, Jake had refused to do it in the interview room, because this kid had been locked in an enclosed space, he didn’t want to traumatise her more. So the three of them – four, technically, with the social worker who took a backseat to let them do their job – sat on the couch in the breakroom and listened to Beyoncé until she felt strong enough to tell them everything. And Jake had held the little girl’s hand the whole time, and watched her with such gentleness that the wall Amy had built up against him ( _always late, immature, arrogant, rude_ ) started to crumble.

So maybe, perhaps, if Maybe Eight Drink Amy had gone to Vegas with the Nine Nine three weeks after she started, maybe it would’ve worked like that.

But she hadn’t, and it didn’t, but it was irrelevant because they were here now, Amy gliding up the aisle between Charles and Gina ( _Charles was already crying_ ), beaming at Jake.

“Dearly beloved,” Terry says, voice breaking, clutching both Amy and Jake’s hands, “Today, tonight, my beautiful, stupid grown up kids promise to love each other forever.”

Jake nods solemnly, and something about the way he looks at her – out of the corner of his eye, like he’s checking she’s still there - makes Amy feel startlingly sober.

She’s marrying Jake, in a dress borrowed from Kylie because she had nothing Vegas appropriate in her own wardrobe, in a pair of beige flats. She did her own make up in the bathroom of their hotel room. Her mother is on the other side of the country, probably sleeping. She’s marrying _Jake_.

Terry looks at her expectantly.

“Amy, will you love Jake forever, as your husband?”

She nods. He’s her best friend in the whole world. Everything else can wait. “I will.”

“And Jake, will you love Amy-?”

“Yes, definitely.”

“Don’t interrupt me when I’m marrying you!” Terry says indignantly, “Have y’all got your own vows?”

“I think that might be a little too much to ask from two people who decided to do this an hour and a half ago!” Gina calls from the front row.

Jake looks from Amy to Terry to Rosa and then back to Amy.

“I actually – I have something on my phone…”

“He wrote it in the taxi,” Rosa says, “When Amy was yelling at Holt about standardised testing.”

Amy wants to say something about how what she had to say about standardised testing was _important and right_ , but Jake’s fumbling with his phone and he keeps glancing up at her like he can’t quite believe it. She knows how he feels.

“Rosa, where did I -? Oh wait, no,” he grins at her a little shyly. She wants to cry. _We’re gonna love each other forever,_ she thinks. “I found it.”

“Jake,” Holt says, “The overwhelming time pressure.”

“Right. Yeah. Only got this place for like twenty minutes. Right. Ames,” he’s not looking at her, reading straight from his too-bright phone screen, “Ames, a couple of years ago before something happened between us romantic stylez, you nearly went for this job at Major Crimes and I wrote you a letter of recommendation. This letter has been lost in the mists of time, but I can remember the sort of things I said and I think you’d like to hear them. I think I wrote about how organised you are, and how good you are at answering emails, and I know I definitely wrote about how good you are at Secret Santa. And I wrote about how, like our third case together, it was this kidnapping, I don’t know if you remember it?”

He looks at her, and she nods gently, tears shining in her eyes.

“Right. Good. Anyway, during this case we stayed up for like nearly a whole week straight, it was insane, and we wound up finding this little girl in the basement of some asshole businessman. And we had to get a statement off this kid, and Amy – you were so gentle with her, Ames, and so patient and I realised as we were interviewing her that you’re the kindest person I know, Amy. And I think I fell in love with you right then, in the break room – I didn’t write that down in the letter of recommendation, obviously, because I didn’t know that I was in love with you then. It took me so long to get my head out of my ass and realise. But now I know, y’know, now we know…it’s good. So, um, I guess I’ll finish by saying that when I gave you the letter of recommendation I said sometimes our job sucks but it sucks a little less when I get to do it with you. And now I realise that’s not only true of work but like, life. In general. So, yeah.”

He locks his phone, and stuffs it in the pocket of his jeans.

Amy kind of wants to punch him in the arm. “How the hell am I supposed to follow that?!”

Everyone laughs ( _it’s not lost on her that pretty much everyone is crying now – even Gina_ ).

“I don’t know, make it up!” Jake laughs, and wipes the tears from his eyes.

“Alright. Okay. I have notes for this but they’re in my _Wedding Binder, which you did not let me bring on vacation_. I think – I think you’re my best friend in the whole world, Jake Peralta. The ten time Grammy award winning artist Taylor Swift once sang in the song Stay Stay Stay from her 2012 album _Red_ -”

Jake – and indeed, the whole wedding party - looks a little in shock.

“What? Jake is not the only Taylor Swift fan in the squad! Anyway, in Stay Stay Stay she sang “ _It’s been occurring to me that I’d like to hang out with you for my whole life_. And that’s how I feel about you. If you’ll have me.”

He laughs, and pulls her in as Terry declares them husband and wife.

“Yeah I’ll have you,” Jake laughs against her lips.

 

* * *

 

The hangover is so bad that it’s still affecting her as they wait in the airport for their flight home at six o’clock on Sunday evening. They have been married for sixteen hours. She’s got sunglasses on inside, and she groans against Jake’s shoulder.

“I feel like…if I had just _stuck to wine_ , I’d be alright,” she mumbles, “but no, I had to mainline vodka like it was going out of fashion, ugh, I want to _die_.”

“That wouldn’t be the greatest start to our married life,” Jake says gently, “y’know, if you died.”

She sits up, and tucks her hair behind her ears. “Yeah.”

“I mean, this is a forever thing we’re talking about.”

“Yeah.”

“And listen, Ames – I know you’ve probably got hideous anxiety about your mom, and what’s going to happen when we get home, and all of it, so I was thinking, people have blessing ceremonies right? Like Holt and Kev did, and I just think, y’know, if you wanted to…we could have the dopest mixed faith blessing ceremony in the history of blessing ceremonies. With like, our moms there and Kylie, and your brothers, and you can use your Wedding Binder, and it’s not like this didn’t happen, it would just be, y’know, confirming it. Or something.”

Amy pushes her sunglasses up into her hair, and leans forward. She kisses Jake with all the gentleness she has in her.

“What was that for?”

“I’m really glad,” she says, “that you’re my mrmmmzeep.”

 


End file.
